


Dragon Slayers

by cirque



Category: Resident Evil (Movieverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, Fix-it fic, Gen, Movie/game fic, Pre-Canon, Team Redfield, badass siblings ftw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We just gotta get the hell outta Dodge kid."</p><p>koanju (verstehen) wanted badass Redfield fic, and a movie-verse and game-verse mesh fic, so here it is. This is my attempt at integrating the two worlds at the same time; the way I see it, the main difference between the two are A) what happened in the Mansion, and B) the fact that Claire never made it to Raccoon City in the movies, so here is my attempt at meshing these two (equally awesome!) 'verses. There are quite a few game references littered throughout this; there are fresh baked cookies waiting if you get them! Happy Yuletide koanju, I hope you like this!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dragon Slayers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verstehen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verstehen/gifts).



> Baby!Redfields are my favorite thing to write, *squee!*

At six she dressed herself up in curtains and put their aunt's plastic strainer on her head, parading around for the entire afternoon with his expensive glowing lightsaber dad got him for Christmas.

"Rawr!" She jumped out on him in the dining room as he tried his best to make their bread-and-cheese lunch appetizing. He dropped his knife and shoved her, but she pulled the lightsaber on him.

"Stop being a baby," he shoved her again. She was six and he was twelve, and that was enough to set them poles apart.

"Will you fight dragons with me Chris? Please?" Her frizzy red hair stuck out of the holes in the strainer, and she looked positively crazy. She was missing her two front teeth and had bruises up her legs from being clumsy, but looking at her you'd never guessed she'd lost her mother less than a month ago.

"Maybe one day," Chris said, and placed a plate in front of her. "If you eat up your lunch like a good girl."

 

* * *

 

 

"Dad says you have to come pick me up."

"Bull crap." He considered hanging up on her, but he only got an hour a day during lunch to talk with her; by the time he finished work she'd be in bed.

"No really. He's kicking me out. Says we have ‘artistic differences’."

Chris rolled his eyes; he knew she and their dad didn't get along, and hadn't for years, but neither of them were particularly agreeable at the best of times: dad was an ex-Air Force drunk, and Claire was fourteen. "Brat. Well, you can't live here." He gestured around his apartment as if she could see; messy and cramped, scattered pieces of his RPD uniform spread all around.

"Gee, _thanks bro_."

 

* * *

 

 

She was on her way to visit him when he called her. She was nineteen, barely.

"What the hell Chris? I'm almost here, there's no need to check up on me every couple of miles you know."

He was driving, supporting the phone with his shoulder. "Are you wearing your leathers?" She scoffed, and he didn't know why he bothered asking; knowing her she was probably wearing shorts and sunglasses instead of a helmet, and that damned red jacket she'd been infatuated with lately. "Kid, you'll have an accident one day."

"Yeah, whatever. Are you at home now?"

"No." He wasn't sure how to breech this subject to anyone, never mind his kid sister. "Things are kicking off here, Claire, pretty bad."

"Bad like how?"

"They'll call it a meltdown at the power station, but you know Umbrella and its cover ups…"

He heard gum snap on the other end of the phone as she blew a bubble, and thanked god that she wouldn't be in Raccoon when it all went to hell. She was still just a kid. "Just, promise me you'll stay away? Even if you don't hear from me for a while?"

"Don't hear from you? But where are you going?"

He rolled his eyes; typical Claire. "It's a work thing. Promise?"

"But…" She sighed. "Okay. But what'll happen to Raccoon City?"

He'd been asking himself that same question over and over since deciding to leave last night; the truth was he had no clue. "Something we can't prevent; something you can't help kiddo."

"It is big?"

He laughed despite himself. "Yeah. Pretty damn." He found himself hoping that Jill and the others would be able to contain things in Raccoon while he headed west to California; Wesker _had_ to have some sort of base there. "We just gotta get the hell outta Dodge kid."

"Sure." Her voice was quiet, and he didn't blame her; he'd probably terrified the living daylights out of her. He found himself hoping that whatever happened, Claire would be untouched. It was a dim hope, but he'd never wanted to drag her into this.

"Look, just… go to Aunt Sarah’s place."

"In Nevada? My bike will never make it all the way to Nevada."

"Yeah, Nevada. Get a car, and drive. I'll meet you there."

"And where am I supposed to find a car at such short notice? I don't have any money."

He punched the steering wheel. "I don't care _how_ you get one. This is important Claire, this is the real deal."

She must've caught his meaning, because she sighed. "Okay. And you'll meet me there?"

"Yeah." Probably. _No,_ he stopped himself, _don't think like that, not yet._ "It might be a few weeks, maybe a month, but I'll see you there."

"Okay. ‘Bye. I love you."

"Love you too. And Claire – stay safe."

"I will."

She hung up, and he sighed heavily. He had to remind himself that she was a tough kid, she'd be fine. Probably. What was it Jill had said? _"She's a biker chick Chris. Us girls know how to take care of ourselves."_ He swerved around a corner, and found himself praying that his family would remain intact once all this was over.

 

* * *

 

 

Four years. Not weeks, not months, but _years._ And he'd never expected the goddamned apocalypse. The end of the world had been and gone, chewed up and spat out like chud from a zombie's jaws, and Chris had spent most of it locked up on a four by four cell.

"This just figures," he said to Wendell once, while Wendell was thumbing through the same old magazine.

"Hmm?" Wendell barely listened these days; everyone was getting more and more complacent lately.

"I'm supposed to be a soldier," Chris punched the bars, "Air Force, Special Ops, S.T.A.R.S… I'm supposed to be on the frontline."

"Sure," said Wendell, and turned a page.

Chris heard rattling from above, thudding on the roof of the jail. "What's that?"

Wendell shrugged and made a mumbled noise that was probably meant to be: "I don't know."

"Sounded like a plane engine." Which was ridiculous, and he didn't need reminding of how false hope could niggle away at your sanity. He only had to look at Bennett to know that.

"Maybe someone's come to rescue us," Wendell turned another page, and laughed at his own joke.

 

* * *

 

 

Everything happened quickly after that; Jill had called it living on a prayer, but in reality it was just the thrill of finally being out of that cell, stretching his legs and feeling the comfort of a gun in his hands again. And Claire, older and weary and dumb with amnesia, standing across from him with fear in her eyes.

Alice, the messianic superbitch who had all the right words to give Luther's gang hope, took him aside with a glance. "Her memory _will_ come back. I just want to know if I can trust you?"

He laughed at that, because really, he'd been in this longer than she had; this was his battle, she just happened to have all the answers. But he recognised that look in her eyes, beyond the badmouth and the anger; it was determination, grit and steel and gunmetal and virulent survivalism – she had the same thing in her eyes that he used to treasure in Jill, and Rebecca, and his own baby sister.

 

* * *

 

 

The fact that he was face-to-face with Wesker, after all these years, was something of a shock to the system, and he found himself jarred into silence behind Alice. Primarily because, hell, he wanted nothing more than to tear Wesker limb from limb, and had wanted that since Raccoon – but mostly because Claire was by his side, still hazy from the mind-control, still panicked over K Mart, still just a kid in a red jacket; of all the people he wanted to face Wesker with, Claire was not one of them.

"You've come far Chris," said Wesker, his classic drawl all the more exaggerated because of the large empty room. "I'm pleasantly surprised."

"So have you," Chris circled him, gun levelled at his forehead, ready to shoot at any second, "and I'm pleasantly pissed off. Chairman of Umbrella, huh?"

"It was a ruse," Wesker laughed, "A necessary ruse. You know how I like to play leader?"

Chris blinked, and he was twenty-four again, throwing knives with the team, Captain Wesker laughing every time they missed the target, the newly assigned Officer Valentine clomping around in ridiculous boots. "Is that all this is to you?" He managed to say in the here and now. "A game?"

Wesker cracked his neck like an undulating serpent. "Something like that. You don't mean to imply that this is all my fault?" He gestured around the lab, at the ship, and the dead mainland beyond.

Chris shrugged. "Wesker… Birkin… Ashford; you psychopaths are all the same to me."

Wesker clapped his hands and let out a sudden laugh; beside Chris, Claire jumped in surprise. "But Chris! I was nowhere near the source of the outbreak when it occurred; there was no rescue mission, no plucky band of soldiers, no revenge. Just a mansion and an accident, an _unfortunate_ accident." His voice rolled around the sarcasm like he was actually enjoying himself. "Just ask Alice; she was there, after all."

Alice, held in position by the two Cerberus hounds, shrugged uselessly. Chris knew that neither of them could trust their memories of that time. Though they could both remember the events with certain lucidity, considering Umbrella's involvement in Alice's brain, he couldn't say for sure exactly what happened. He'd swear on his life that he could remember infiltrating the mansion with Wesker and the rest of Alpha team; yet Alice remembered different events, with different soldiers.

Wesker tutted. "Enough talking." He aimed his gun at Claire and shot without a second's hesitation.

Claire ducked, her body lightning-fast and trained to react after all these years of preparation. She smirked despite herself, and Wesker cringed, waiting for her return fire.

"Hey sis," Chris grinned, clocking his gun beside her. "You wanted to fight dragons. Let's fight 'em."


End file.
